[Music]
your name
so we raise your hands if you’re a human
being
Homo sapiens any homeless aliens great a
lot of homeless a fans in the audience
okay raise your hand if you’re about to
become obsolete or irrelevant fewer
hands but I know you’re being timid
because we’ve all heard this story right
we are all about to become obsolete or
irrelevant and if not us then certainly
our children no amount of coding camp
will help travel soccer definitely not
okay
algorithms have already defeated the
best among us in chess in jeopardy and
most recently in the famously
challenging and subtle game of Go
we have robot bartenders on cruise ships
in Thailand they have robot food tasters
and in Saudi Arabia yes
robot camel jockeys so in short
algorithms are doing work so well and
doing work performed by humans so well
they’re pretty soon there won’t be
anything left for us to do okay that’s
the story there’s another story that
you’ve probably heard which is that
we’re on the cusp of a great singularity
humans transcend biology as the
algorithmic frontier moves forward we
will all become man-machine cyborgs
every one of us an iron man or an iron
woman living indefinitely so what will
it be for us this utopian singularity or
a dystopian world without work the story
that I want to tell today and the story
that I believe reflects the actual flow
of history not just going back decades
but going back centuries and millennia
is neither of these the story I want to
tell is yes algorithms and data enabled
machines are
advancing and becoming more powerful at
an exponential rate and no we will not
be working in the same way in 20 years
ten years or even five years as we are
today but as the comparative advantage
of machine over man continues to grow in
many areas of work the human advantage
will persist an indoor indefinitely in
others in my story they answer the
question what can humans do better than
digital computers is pretty simple
humans are better and being human which
of course leads to the question what
does it mean to be human and that is the
question we have to answer now it turns
out that humans and tools machines have
been Co evolving for as long as we’ve
been humans our hominid ancestors 2
million years ago had the idea to cut
into meat and pounded tubers like yams
before eating them now what this did was
to sort of pre digest the food it was
like we outsource part of our digestive
system and because sticks literal sticks
and stones were doing work for us we
could do other work and the other work
that we did was to grow our relative to
other animals large and in particular
densely interconnected brains so what
this first production process did this
first recipe did was literally make us
the species that we are today for better
and for worse in my book the code
economy of 40,000 year history I refer
to the evolution of human societies from
simplicity to complexity over the span
of millenia as the advance of code now
my use of the word code requires some
explanation when we think about code in
the context of the future of work or the
past of work we tend to default to
thinking about computer code digital
code and that’s certainly relevant in
the story I’m telling today we can think
about legal codes Cryptologic codes
building code
a lot of different versions of code but
the the version of the word code the
meaning of the word code that is of
greatest relevance to my talk today is
actually genetic code DNA and the
question that I posed is essentially
what is if we take this evolutionary
notion of human societies in the economy
what is the analog to DNA and human
societies and my answer is that the
analog is production processes it’s how
we take inputs and convert them into
outputs ideas into things ingredients
into meals literally recipes so staying
with literal culinary recipes for a
moment
consider this Sumerian tablets dating
from 3500 BC the first known recipe book
in case you’re curious it contains
recipes for 25 stews 22 meats two is
three vegetarian what the existence of
this cookbook tells us is that we have
not only been inventing new recipes but
we’ve been writing them down encoding
them sharing with sharing them with
other people for 5,000 years now
consider this further astonishing fact
in those 5,000 years about a hundred
billion people have been alive that’s
four quadrillion meals prepared in some
manner or another and consumed over five
thousand years with more or less the
same in fact due to monoculture and
large-scale agriculture a shrinking set
of ingredients so our creativity has
been sufficient at over 5,000 years we
can not only come up with new recipes
but it’s possible to not just survive
but prosper in our society by inventing
new recipes and sharing them with other
people as the story of Julia Child
so clearly attests now I refer to for
40,000 years as as as my reference point
for the advance of code because the
first complex multistage production
process that that archaeologists have
documented is the production of obsidian
axes in the Upper Paleolithic era about
thousand years ago subsequently in the
Neolithic Europe about ten thousand
years ago we built enormous monuments of
stone that required semi-permanent
encampments for their construction and
maintenance one of these encampments
developed into humanity’s first city
shuttle Hewitt in modern-day Turkey as
famed urbanist Jane Jacobs wrote in her
book the economy of cities agriculture
and cities evolved together developed
together ideas and seeds hybridized
together and code became trades guild
protected trades that were so stable
over time that they became family names
Baker burger Smith or Eisenhower which
means iron worker in the 20th century
production by small-scale tradesmen
craftsmen family farmers began to be
overtaken by large complex firms society
invented a new way to organize work the
job now admittedly there were large
scale organizations before the 20th
century notably the British East India
Company and there might have been
versions of something like what we would
call a job today
but it was really only in the last
hundred years that we had fixed roles
specific sub routines within sub
routines within large organizations
unions pensions all of the things that
we think about it as a job or just in
the last hundred years a blink in human
history in the last 40 years in the
United States and other advanced
industrialized country and countries
another ethical change took place
Manufacturing farms became increasingly
efficient as a consequence of both
algorithms and robots as well as improve
production processes management it was
possible to produce the output consumed
in society with far fewer people that
had been the case in the past the
society shifted to services it turns out
that data on word frequencies from
Google Ngram Google’s Ngram tool show
that the phrases have a nice day and may
I help you emerged into common parlance
at the same time that the economy
shifted from manufacturing to services
now in the last 10 or 15 years these
mechanistic scripted versions of a
service economy have began slowly to
yield to a more fluid theatrical version
of the Apple Store or of Harry Potter
world we are ostensibly in the age of
the experience economy corporations
around the world are now talking about
not providing goods and services to
their customers but to create
experiences so that roughly speaking is
where we are today so where are we going
before I conclude I’m gonna ask you to
do something for me it’s gonna take
about 45 seconds maybe a minute that’s
going to require some work so you guys
ready I’m going to ask you to stand up
it has to stand up first unless you
can’t which is fine then we’re gonna
have to sort of lean and stand up stand
up everybody stand up and find one
person exactly one person if you don’t
have a person that’s okay
but try to find exactly one person and
hold their hand for one moment just one
person to be your partner okay turn
around if you don’t have a person just
one it can only be one it’s got to only
been one person so you got to turn
around and find somebody this is the
tricky part find one person one person
okay
now now I’m going to count to three
listen up you got to have your one
person I’m going to count to three and
at three I want you to look into that
person’s eyes for five seconds
do not look away do not blink
okay just five seconds all right on the
count of three one two three
all right I love that I loved watching
you guys do that all right okay so so so
how did that feel
why did I ask you to do that okay you
can sit down now thank you getting back
to where I started
what does it mean to be human right to
be human is to to create to collaborate
to share we know that from the
archaeological and anthropological
record we are a social species
anthropologist eel Wilson wrote in his
book the social conquest of Earth that
it was group selection not selfish genes
that propelled our species forward over
the span of millennia to be human is to
create and share meals the end of the
festival of Ramadan Diwali Passover
dinner
Easter Sunday festivals meals recipes
and our humanity are deeply intertwined
to be human is to share of our
creativity and passions with other
people
knitting circles trading baseball cards
or like my friend a modest car from
Northern Virginia to create a falafel
shop to benefit refugees to be human is
to do what we’re doing today but it’s
more but to be human is to listen it’s
to console it’s to empathize so no you
are not going to become obsolete or
irrelevant and neither your children
because of one simple reason
human contact can’t be automated no
passion can’t be automated and in a very
real and physical sense I contact can’t
be automated
thank you
[Applause]
your name
so we raise your hands if you’re a human
being
Homo sapiens any homeless aliens great a
lot of homeless a fans in the audience
okay raise your hand if you’re about to
become obsolete or irrelevant fewer
hands but I know you’re being timid
because we’ve all heard this story right
we are all about to become obsolete or
irrelevant and if not us then certainly
our children no amount of coding camp
will help travel soccer definitely not
okay
algorithms have already defeated the
best among us in chess in jeopardy and
most recently in the famously
challenging and subtle game of Go
we have robot bartenders on cruise ships
in Thailand they have robot food tasters
and in Saudi Arabia yes
robot camel jockeys so in short
algorithms are doing work so well and
doing work performed by humans so well
they’re pretty soon there won’t be
anything left for us to do okay that’s
the story there’s another story that
you’ve probably heard which is that
we’re on the cusp of a great singularity
humans transcend biology as the
algorithmic frontier moves forward we
will all become man-machine cyborgs
every one of us an iron man or an iron
woman living indefinitely so what will
it be for us this utopian singularity or
a dystopian world without work the story
that I want to tell today and the story
that I believe reflects the actual flow
of history not just going back decades
but going back centuries and millennia
is neither of these the story I want to
tell is yes algorithms and data enabled
machines are
advancing and becoming more powerful at
an exponential rate and no we will not
be working in the same way in 20 years
ten years or even five years as we are
today but as the comparative advantage
of machine over man continues to grow in
many areas of work the human advantage
will persist an indoor indefinitely in
others in my story they answer the
question what can humans do better than
digital computers is pretty simple
humans are better and being human which
of course leads to the question what
does it mean to be human and that is the
question we have to answer now it turns
out that humans and tools machines have
been Co evolving for as long as we’ve
been humans our hominid ancestors 2
million years ago had the idea to cut
into meat and pounded tubers like yams
before eating them now what this did was
to sort of pre digest the food it was
like we outsource part of our digestive
system and because sticks literal sticks
and stones were doing work for us we
could do other work and the other work
that we did was to grow our relative to
other animals large and in particular
densely interconnected brains so what
this first production process did this
first recipe did was literally make us
the species that we are today for better
and for worse in my book the code
economy of 40,000 year history I refer
to the evolution of human societies from
simplicity to complexity over the span
of millenia as the advance of code now
my use of the word code requires some
explanation when we think about code in
the context of the future of work or the
past of work we tend to default to
thinking about computer code digital
code and that’s certainly relevant in
the story I’m telling today we can think
about legal codes Cryptologic codes
building code
a lot of different versions of code but
the the version of the word code the
meaning of the word code that is of
greatest relevance to my talk today is
actually genetic code DNA and the
question that I posed is essentially
what is if we take this evolutionary
notion of human societies in the economy
what is the analog to DNA and human
societies and my answer is that the
analog is production processes it’s how
we take inputs and convert them into
outputs ideas into things ingredients
into meals literally recipes so staying
with literal culinary recipes for a
moment
consider this Sumerian tablets dating
from 3500 BC the first known recipe book
in case you’re curious it contains
recipes for 25 stews 22 meats two is
three vegetarian what the existence of
this cookbook tells us is that we have
not only been inventing new recipes but
we’ve been writing them down encoding
them sharing with sharing them with
other people for 5,000 years now
consider this further astonishing fact
in those 5,000 years about a hundred
billion people have been alive that’s
four quadrillion meals prepared in some
manner or another and consumed over five
thousand years with more or less the
same in fact due to monoculture and
large-scale agriculture a shrinking set
of ingredients so our creativity has
been sufficient at over 5,000 years we
can not only come up with new recipes
but it’s possible to not just survive
but prosper in our society by inventing
new recipes and sharing them with other
people as the story of Julia Child
so clearly attests now I refer to for
40,000 years as as as my reference point
for the advance of code because the
first complex multistage production
process that that archaeologists have
documented is the production of obsidian
axes in the Upper Paleolithic era about
thousand years ago subsequently in the
Neolithic Europe about ten thousand
years ago we built enormous monuments of
stone that required semi-permanent
encampments for their construction and
maintenance one of these encampments
developed into humanity’s first city
shuttle Hewitt in modern-day Turkey as
famed urbanist Jane Jacobs wrote in her
book the economy of cities agriculture
and cities evolved together developed
together ideas and seeds hybridized
together and code became trades guild
protected trades that were so stable
over time that they became family names
Baker burger Smith or Eisenhower which
means iron worker in the 20th century
production by small-scale tradesmen
craftsmen family farmers began to be
overtaken by large complex firms society
invented a new way to organize work the
job now admittedly there were large
scale organizations before the 20th
century notably the British East India
Company and there might have been
versions of something like what we would
call a job today
but it was really only in the last
hundred years that we had fixed roles
specific sub routines within sub
routines within large organizations
unions pensions all of the things that
we think about it as a job or just in
the last hundred years a blink in human
history in the last 40 years in the
United States and other advanced
industrialized country and countries
another ethical change took place
Manufacturing farms became increasingly
efficient as a consequence of both
algorithms and robots as well as improve
production processes management it was
possible to produce the output consumed
in society with far fewer people that
had been the case in the past the
society shifted to services it turns out
that data on word frequencies from
Google Ngram Google’s Ngram tool show
that the phrases have a nice day and may
I help you emerged into common parlance
at the same time that the economy
shifted from manufacturing to services
now in the last 10 or 15 years these
mechanistic scripted versions of a
service economy have began slowly to
yield to a more fluid theatrical version
of the Apple Store or of Harry Potter
world we are ostensibly in the age of
the experience economy corporations
around the world are now talking about
not providing goods and services to
their customers but to create
experiences so that roughly speaking is
where we are today so where are we going
before I conclude I’m gonna ask you to
do something for me it’s gonna take
about 45 seconds maybe a minute that’s
going to require some work so you guys
ready I’m going to ask you to stand up
it has to stand up first unless you
can’t which is fine then we’re gonna
have to sort of lean and stand up stand
up everybody stand up and find one
person exactly one person if you don’t
have a person that’s okay
but try to find exactly one person and
hold their hand for one moment just one
person to be your partner okay turn
around if you don’t have a person just
one it can only be one it’s got to only
been one person so you got to turn
around and find somebody this is the
tricky part find one person one person
okay
now now I’m going to count to three
listen up you got to have your one
person I’m going to count to three and
at three I want you to look into that
person’s eyes for five seconds
do not look away do not blink
okay just five seconds all right on the
count of three one two three
all right I love that I loved watching
you guys do that all right okay so so so
how did that feel
why did I ask you to do that okay you
can sit down now thank you getting back
to where I started
what does it mean to be human right to
be human is to to create to collaborate
to share we know that from the
archaeological and anthropological
record we are a social species
anthropologist eel Wilson wrote in his
book the social conquest of Earth that
it was group selection not selfish genes
that propelled our species forward over
the span of millennia to be human is to
create and share meals the end of the
festival of Ramadan Diwali Passover
dinner
Easter Sunday festivals meals recipes
and our humanity are deeply intertwined
to be human is to share of our
creativity and passions with other
people
knitting circles trading baseball cards
or like my friend a modest car from
Northern Virginia to create a falafel
shop to benefit refugees to be human is
to do what we’re doing today but it’s
more but to be human is to listen it’s
to console it’s to empathize so no you
are not going to become obsolete or
irrelevant and neither your children
because of one simple reason
human contact can’t be automated no
passion can’t be automated and in a very
real and physical sense I contact can’t
be automated
thank you
[Applause]
Please follow and like us: